


Occam's Razor

by penscritch



Series: Wizardess Heart collection [5]
Category: Shall We Date?: Wizardess Heart+
Genre: F/M, MC doesn't show up in this fic but is mentioned, confused!Klaus, incomprehensible feelings, organizational management deluxe, sometime in the route before Day 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4892485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penscritch/pseuds/penscritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus is very determined to get to the bottom of this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Occam's Razor

**Author's Note:**

> Plot bunny sponsored by sprikuenall and jambajunkie. Basically we were talking about why Klaus was so harsh on the MC from the beginning even though he canonically told Elias that he’d fallen in love with the MC at first sight. See this post here: http://poetscript.tumblr.com/post/129898043573/jambajunkie-poetscript-jambajunkie#notes for more details.
> 
> I figured that all those diagrams in spacial magic probably mean it’s incredibly math-based, especially at the advanced levels. That’s why I made Klaus use math terminology while sorting his thoughts. He’s certainly enough of a nerd to do that if he’s unconsciously panicking. A brief rundown: in any function (or problem) y = f(x), the dependent variable is y (or the observable output or effect) and the independent variable is x (or the cause). So Klaus will be looking for the x (cause) responsible for the y (output) that’s causing him so much trouble.

Klaus had a problem on his hands.

He knew himself fairly well, and he knew he’d behaved uncharacteristically these last few days. Granted, he’d wasted hours at the station waiting for a student who had wandered off and gotten herself lost. That was enough to make anyone angry. And then to find her foolishly attempting to touch the Scale of Judgment before her Judgment Day? That came close to touching the ire he felt towards the perpetrator of the pigeon killings.

But while Klaus was prone to getting irritated at idiots, he knew they couldn’t help being idiots any more than he could help being brilliant. He usually managed to avoid getting as angry as he did at Cloudberg. He’d _yelled_ at her. And amazingly, his short conversation with her had calmed down that anger just as quickly. That extreme fluctuation in his emotions worried him; when he got angry, he tended to stay angry until whichever moron who offended him had either fixed his own mess or made an appropriate apology. Or suffered enough to count as compensation.

Klaus also found himself less annoyed than he should be at being chained to an incompetent Buddy. He really didn’t care about his grades that much, even if he kept them up because doing anything less than his best was unacceptable. It was more the prospect of having to deal with someone who would undoubtedly cling onto him and add to his workload. Yet strangely, he found himself _enjoying_ Cloudberg’s company.

When was the last time he genuinely found himself enjoying someone else’s company?

So Klaus found himself clearing out a segment of time from his busy schedule to sit down at his desk and sort himself out. He drew out a clean sheet of paper from a drawer and picked up his pen, separating the paper into three columns. One he titled “Dependent Variables” and another “Independent Variables.” For the final column, he wrote “Solution.”

First, the dependent variables. What had been unusual behavior for him during the past few days? And when had it started?

Klaus thought for a moment. Aside from Cloudberg’s arrival, nothing had been particularly abnormal for him. Life at the academy was incredibly dull that way – people were sheep who had to be startled to show something new, and Klaus prided himself on making sure he handled problems before they ended up distracting the students from their studies.

Before meeting Cloudberg, Klaus would have thought if he’d ever gotten a Buddy, he’d leave him or her to fend for themselves and not bothered to care a whit what became of them. But something about Cloudberg made him relent. Her eagerness perhaps, or the way she at least tried to stand up to him even if she visibly quaked in her boots.

Despite his Prefect duties, he found himself going out of his way to conduct extra training for her. And her happiness at every small success oddly made him feel proud as well. He liked teasing her, and he liked to see that stupid smile on her face, the one that _he_ put there.

He paused. Where did that thought come from?

More to the point, his problematic behavior seemed to be either caused by or related to Cloudberg. Fine. He could work with that.

He put pen to paper. Without thinking particularly hard about it, he wrote down almost any cause that came to his head. Some spirit of mischief inspired him to write down, ‘Love’ as well. Though ridiculous, it wasn’t as entirely out of bounds as ‘Insanity,’ which he’d also written down.

Then he went down the list and crossed out the obviously incorrect ones. Including ‘Insanity.’

Down to three possibilities. He’d have to think about these a little more carefully.

The first one he could immediately cross out. It was impossible for Cloudberg to have used love magic (otherwise known as persuasion magic) – which included love potions, spells, and certain rare and illegal magical tools that attempted to influence emotions positively towards the caster – simply because she didn’t have the ability. If she were anyone else, Klaus might have entertained the notion that she’d been shamming her current ineptitude at magic for some unknown purpose. However, Klaus had been there watching her struggle through controlling a simple Ventos spell until she was red in the face and just about ready to collapse where she stood. The simple happiness at his praise hadn’t been false, either. Klaus had been subjected to more than enough idiots who thought they could paste a smile on their faces and suffer through his tongue-lashing for ambition’s sake not to see through it all.

If she were anyone else, Klaus might have also considered the possibility that she’d somehow obtained something with love magic ready-to-use and used it on him – beginning with that juvenile pink toad prank. But even if Klaus had been incapable of spotting unsavory magic at a hundred paces, he’d still count her out. She'd looked so honestly surprised at the toad appearing and then scared of him, followed by guilt at fooling around during their training session that it was completely impossible.

Plus, Klaus didn’t know any villain who’d willingly humiliate themselves in public by giving themselves bunny ears on their first day of class at the most prestigious magic school in the nation.

He chuckled at the thought, then frowned at himself.

Since when did he laugh this easily?

He shook his head. Back to the list.

The next possibility was “Stress.” In some ways he found this a less believable cause than even love magic. He’d handled all his Prefect duties from the beginning without ever feeling overwhelmed even though the workload demanded the capabilities of two Prefects. But truthfully, the thought that someone was wandering around campus using _dark magic_ …

He carefully wrestled down the surge of rage.

Since that was unlikely, he looked down at the third remaining answer.

And blinked.

…Surely not.

He wanted to laugh it off but a creeping, dreadful certainty made him run through the facts even though he had a good idea of what he’d come up with. He’d begun deviating from the norm since her arrival. Seeing Azusa’s hands on her gave him the sudden desire to string him up and drop him down a ravine, even though logically, he knew that she looked too pale for it to be anything other than platonic assistance.

She also made him… feel things.

He stared at that innocuous, four-letter word sitting under the independent variable column. The only one not crossed out.

No. It couldn’t be.

But Occam’s Razor claimed that among equally likely hypotheses, the answer that involved the least number of assumptions was the best choice.

Love magic was so preposterous it needed more assumptions than he could possibly write on this paper. Stress was so preposterous it had only two non-assumptions in its corner – his burning hatred for dark magic and the fact that the perpetrator still hadn’t been found (though he had a very strong suspicion who it might be).

And Klaus knew from his research on dark magic that love potions and the like never managed to simulate real love, the kind that made you attracted to someone even while you wanted to shake them. Love magic only managed to inspire insipid, flowery devotion in the sense of terrible poetry and torrid physical desire. Klaus felt nothing of the sort around Cloudberg. He recognized her as pretty, yes, but it was no more than a rational assessment of her looks. She had nothing on the ravishing beauty of his older brother’s fiancée. He also did not feel the need to praise her every quality to the skies. In fact, he’d taken the opportunity during the training sessions to reprimand her for her mistakes. How was she going to improve otherwise?

So while Klaus could admit to some physical attraction (he wasn’t blind) and finding enjoyment in her company (her reactions were amusing and there was a way about her that he found charming), he didn’t want to write an ode to her hair or the brilliance of her smile, nice enough though those features might be. In short, nothing that could be attributed to artificial feelings and everything that could be attributed to real ones.

…

He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Of all things to have happen to him while he was still a Prefect. Even if it was the only answer that fit, it seemed too insane to believe. He never thought he’d fall in love with a girl at first sight, let alone someone so incredibly normal.

Then again, he never did do anything by halves.

Klaus leaned back in his chair absently.

Still, the bunnyhead wasn’t the worst person he could have fallen in love with. She was kind and intelligent (despite her occasional airheaded antics), and not bad-looking. Not bad-looking at all.

He smiled, thinking of the way she’d grinned up at him after their last training session, so pleased and… well, cute.

There were definitely worse things to have happen to him, Klaus thought. He didn’t know where this was going, but…

He found himself rather looking forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Klaus planned to take it slow (while hauling the MC into non-provisional, accepted status through sheer guts and willpower), but then the future MC landed in front of him. And he realized, hell, I really am in love. Damn, it feels good to know she really loves me too.
> 
> Of course, let’s not forget the whole Azusa thing.
> 
> *guiltily adding to the world-hopping fic when I should be working on the modern college AU*
> 
> P.S. This came out really wordy. (I think?) Hopefully it’s still enjoyable and not confusing. :)


End file.
